Re: survey: psql syntax errors abort my transactions

On Thu, 2020-07-02 at 08:54 -0700, Jeremy Schneider wrote:
> Maybe it's just me, but I'm wondering if it's worth changing the default behavior
> of psql so it doesn't abort transactions in interactive mode when I mistakenly
> mis-spell "select" or something silly like that.
> This is of course easily remedied in my psqlrc file by adding "\set ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK interactive".
> [...]
> But I do know that for all the new people coming to PostgreSQL right now
> (including lots at my company), none of them are going to know about this setting
> and personally I think the default is user-unfriendly.
> [...]
>
> So...
>
> Survey for the user community here on the pgsql-general list: it would be great if lots
> of people could chime in by answering two questions about your very own production environment:
>
> question 1) are you worried about scripts in your production environment where damage
> could be caused by a different default in a future new major version of postgresql?
> not aborting transactions in interactive mode when syntax errors occur)

I would dislike if interactive mode behaves differently from a non-interactive mode.

This is my favorite example why I like the way PostgreSQL does things:

/* poor man's VACUUM (FULL) */
BEGIN;
CREATTE TABLE t2 AS SELECT * FROM t1;
DROP TABLE t1;
ALTER TABLE t2 RENAME TO t1;
COMMIT;

> question 2) do you think the increased user-friendliness of changing this default
> behavior would be worthwhile for specific users in your organization who use postgresql?
> (including both yourself and others you know of)

I personally would benefit because I wouldn't have to repeat the whole transaction
while teaching a class when I made a typo inside a transaction.

Still I prefer the way things are currently. Teaching classes is not the main
use case of psql.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe